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Is the truth really of value?

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Is the truth really of value?

mpoissant17
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Posted 06/11/09 - 01:37 PM: Subject: Is the truth really of value?	#1
Back in the day people used to believe that the earth was the center of the universe but since then Copernicus used scientific induction and calculations to determine that the earth in fact revolves around the sun proving that the geocentric theory was false. But just because heliocentricity is the truth doesn't mean that it is a better theory than geocentricity. We hold truth to be this great value but why is it held to such a high standered? We can't control it. It constantly brings us sadness and strife. So then why is the quality of being true a value. What really makes truth better than fallacy or reality better than illusion? Tell my why something must be true for me to accept it.
"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality." Bertrand Russell

unenlightened
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Posted 06/11/09 - 01:49 PM:	#2
Well let me answer that question with bullshit, fabrication and lies. They are just as good as a true answer.
...most of our actions are the result of the past, or according to a future ideal. That's not action, that is just conformity. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

Vague Abstraction
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Posted 06/11/09 - 02:05 PM:	#3
Nowhere is it written that the truth must be pleasurable. In fact, sometimes it sucks. To say a bit more, the truth sometimes appeals to us emotionally - for aesthetic or practical reasons - but other times, it is frightening or even painful. The relationship humans have with truth is interesting, mainly because sometimes the truth is terrible, but we seek it anyway, and other times it is liberating, but we throw it away because we cannot cope with it. Personally, I seek truth because it makes me feel good - which, really, is no better than (hypothetically) rejecting it because it makes me feel bad, and thereby stops me from feeling good. If it is pleasure we want, sometimes truth is the way to go. Edited by Vague Abstraction on 06/11/09 - 02:11 PM

MrJiveBoJingles
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Posted 06/11/09 - 02:08 PM:	#4
If you're going to put any of your conclusions to practical use, wouldn't you want them to be true rather than false? A false assessment that a bridge will hold up when a ten ton load is driven across it won't be very good to the driver when the bridge collapses, will it?

ciceronianus
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Posted 06/11/09 - 02:34 PM:

mpoissant17 wrote:
Tell my why something must be true for me to accept it.

Well, if you really don't want to accept what is true, you don't have to, you know. I'm not going to force you.

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce

"There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

wuliheron
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Posted 06/11/09 - 02:47 PM:	#6
I agree, there are many times when illusion and falsehood serve people better than truth and reality. However, in the long run they are hard to igore.

Dangerous Curves
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Posted 06/11/09 - 08:20 PM:	#7
I think I agree with the Dalai Lama in that happiness is of ultimate value. Now just where does truth fit into that...
"She carries me through days of apathy. She washes over me. She saved my life in a manner of speaking when she gave me back the power to believe."

cosscos
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Posted 06/11/09 - 09:46 PM:	#8
Dangerous Curves, you mentioned of minimizing sufferings as value in the other thread. Is it possibly compatible with happiness in this thread?

Cuthbert
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Posted 06/12/09 - 12:18 AM:	#9
Perhaps truth is not especially valuable. If that is so, then it's true that truth is not especially valuable. But being true is not a quality to especially value in a statement. So there's no better reason to say (truly) that truth is not valuable than (falsely) that it is very valuable. And if that is so, then it's true that there's no better reason to say that truth is not valuable than that it is valuable. So even that judgement is of no value. So the hypothesis, that truth is not especially valuable, leads to the conclusion that any statement at all, true or false, is utterly worthless, including this one. So the thesis of the OP is worthless - if it's true. If it's false, however, we can at least have the instructive lesson of recognising it as such.

treysuttle
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Posted 06/12/09 - 03:33 AM:	#10
I've lately been thinking about the normativity of knowledge (in distinction to say more naturalistic conceptions of knowledge which suggest that our project is, viz. Quine, merely to describe the nomological input-output of an organism). Part of the normativity of claims to knowledge is the commitment to a criteria. In the most broad sense, the criteria is rationality -- to make a knowledge claim (as opposed to say merely a belief or a conviction) is to say that one has good 'reasons' for one's beliefs. But why is this important? I think part of the answer lies in our being social creatures. As opposed to merely stating a belief, i.e. 'I believe in God, I don't care what the reasons might be one way or another', when one makes a claim to knowledge, one is implicitly making a universal claim in that, the very idea of knowledge (as opposed to belief) is that one commits one's self to having reasons for one's claim. In committing one's self to having reasons, one is making a social pact with fellow persons...namely, by positing reasons one is implicitly saying that her reasons ought to be sufficient for you to accept her claim. Not only is she making a commitment to you, but she is also accepting that she be held 'epistemically responsible' for her claim -- and perhaps morally responsible as well! One ought not say that one knows something to be true unless they also believe that they have good reasons and they believe that their reasons are sufficient for any rational agent. If you tell me that you know something...you are going beyond merely stating your belief...you are committing to me your authority -- that I ought to accept your claim. Unlike beliefs....to tell me that you know something when you do not, is akin to lying. In that sense, at least one value of 'truth' of knowledge claims is of a similar value as telling the truth to others in non-epistemic situations. You value that others tell us the truth (for obvious reasons), just as we value knowledge claims because of their normative criteria. Such a view captures the standard that we hold to knowledge, makes explicit the social dimensions of knowledge, but allows for 'beliefs' 'pragmaticism' 'approximations' and the like.

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